Third Time's the Charm
by Seta Suzume
Summary: The three times Song mentored.


It wasn't until after Theo came home that Song offered to try and mentor if the right opportunity came. Mentoring was a very serious business and she was lucky to live in a district where she wasn't obligated to it, but, well, looking at Theo, she'd asked herself, "How hard can it be?"

He was kind of like Mags, she thought, just…sort of stupid. Not a piece of work like the rest of them. The Games didn't ruin everybody.

So, she watched the Club kids more carefully. A lot of them were kind of annoying.

Coming up on the 60th, Mags really liked a girl. Mags usually went for the boys. Odysseus had some thoughts about this that went beyond joking that Mags was jealous only he had brought a girl home to Four. He brought Manny over to her house. "Thought you might get on," he shrugged.

"Oh, just like that," Song rolled her eyes.

But Manny Pasquale- he was all right. Great with hand-to-hand combat. Easy-going, but not sloppy. He was Odysseus' top pick for the boy and Shad and Mags were with him on that (Tyde was leaning toward Cole Carpo). Odysseus thought he was the right one for the Games and for his victor's first time mentoring. Though they did some one on one training and talked, Song wasn't holding her breath as she waited to see how things would turn out. She wasn't going to push it.

The moment of truth came. "First choice mentor: _" the form asked (one final polling of all the Club's eighteen-year-olds not to put too much pressure on the person the victors thought best to go). "Song," Manny wrote.

Manny scored a seven. He was handsome enough to catch the eye, but not so much as for it to distract from his practical skills. Manny and Mags' girl, Bridget, were in the usual alliance, no problem. It all began ordinarily enough.

Then he told the pack he was good at climbing. He fell and broke his neck.

"No…" Song stared at her dimmed screen and Manny's flat vitals as One's Aurora hurriedly climbed down from where she had perched a few branches below him.

"You pushed him!" Bridget Cooper screamed over her friend's broken body and the Career pack went to pieces as Mags put her head in her hands.

Song wasn't much interested in mentoring after that. Manny hadn't even gone down in a fight. What a waste.

But there was more need for victors to teach than to mentor and that didn't have to get half as close or a fraction as a dire. Training was all right.

On Mags' suggestion, she'd been hanging out with Theo more.

Then one day they were talking after hours at the Club building and Theo said something kind of funny while he was moping the floor and she laughed and he turned and looked her in the eye so earnestly: "Would you kiss me?"

There were four other people who could think about mentoring things. Only they could have this. "Come here," Song answered.

Getting married was good attention for the district anyway. They were only the second double victor marriage. Positive publicity of any type would attract sponsor attention. It said that Fours were a good investment. That they'd keep on entertaining.

Of course, Song was only willing to entertain so far. Some people didn't like the paid wedding night programming because the production looked "too amateur." Better…well, better meaning more attentive, fans of Theo, she supposed, were more forgiving because it didn't show as much but it sold the idea that Theo might've made the recording himself. That was what he was saying on the talk show circuit. It was one of those compromises.

As far as her personal life was considered, it would be her final one of distinction, Song thought.

Theo loved kids. She knew that from the start. And that if it were going to be the two of them, Song didn't need to interrogate herself in search of her own true thoughts on the matter any further. If two victors had a child together, what were the odds that they wouldn't be called?

And if the Capitol wanted your child that badly, well, Halma Selsy had vouched for it later on, spilling out her secret guilt to try and move on. "I had planned on going in, like I'd said before. But I didn't volunteer for Margie," she had told Tyde, "Because the Capitol official at the sign-in showed me surveillance pictures from that very morning of all my family. I imagine he showed all the other top girls the same thing. All twelve members of my family would be dead the instant I stepped on that train to the Capitol or Margie Barrow would take her chances."

The commentators were hard on Margie Barrow. The Career pack had more mercy. They took her along because they respected her father. They did her in while she was sleeping.

Marrying Theo put an end to certain difficult questions and it wasn't as if Song had ever thought of herself as particularly maternal anyway, but, still. A person did wonder.

As time passed, even the older members of the Club came to feel more and more like kids and less like peers. Song found herself growing more fond of them in general, though no one stood out to her in particular as a kid she just had to get involved with. Was it really just some mundane thing? Mags and either Tyde or Odysseus made up the mentoring team pretty much every year, but sometimes Shad went. How did Shad pick those kids? Was Song ever going to feel that moment of destiny?

Theo never had- they'd talked about it. Mags had just pulled him in when out of line volunteering gave her tributes she would've taken in separate years and when no volunteer situations produced similar results because he was adaptable and could field lots of sponsorships. It didn't seem to bother Theo that he might only ever be an alternate mentor, but Song wasn't sure if that just wasn't because he didn't spend as much time with the kids at the Club.

And then there was an out of turn volunteer that Mags didn't hand down. Song had noticed Finnick before, but nothing she had seen had made her think he'd make it at fourteen (and she couldn't project him into the future as anything but an easy-on-the-eyes maybe). Shad's Niemi, quick and thoughtful, had seemed a good choice for the girl, but it didn't take the Capitol any time at all to forget about her.

Finnick was out there mentoring before Song went back. She wondered if he would be good at it- if that was part of what Mags saw and liked so much in him. It had turned out Mags agreed with Song about her own likeness to Theo in some areas- "He's what I was once- kinder than he is wise, and friendly, and not bad on camera," Mags declared, ….But he doesn't have to be what I became."- so for Mags' involvement in the district's place in the Games he was no heir apparent.

Song kept at what she felt she did well. Her oldest nephew, Tommy, joined the Club and she felt her gaze slip away to follow him from time to time. But it wasn't Tommy her odds-weighing mind settled upon.

"June Gaudet," she pulled from the sixteens at the end of the day, "You're not some distant relation of Mags'?"

"No, Ms. Song. My dad gave me that name when he took me in because there was a scandal Down-District about my real parents when I was born. He thought I needed a name that had a good association." June retied her wavy hair, messy from practice. "I'm, uh, Mr. Neska's daughter, you know?"

"Ohhhh," Song recalled. Her family had never gone out too much for the old religion, but Mags was one of the people who did. Mr. Neska- or, rather, Padre Luke if you felt safe enough to say it- was a nice old man who'd taken in several kids over the years.

"Is there anything else?" Her task finished, June straightened up and waited politely to listen on.

Song hesitated for a moment, but what else had she asked June to stay for if not make this offer? "If you want extra training, I would be happy to give it to you."

"Me? Wow, thank you, Ms. Song," the girl smiled, "I- I'll think about it!"

Finnick brought home a victor that year- the same speed of mentoring success as Tyde. There probably wasn't any training within the bounds of what they did in Four that would've made a drastic difference in Annie's reaction to her counterpart's head bouncing to the ground, but Song thought the changes the other Special Athletics Club girls observed in Annie made ripples.

June showed up on the morning of a day Song awoke to the sound of Annie screaming across the street (Theo, the comatose lump, slept on).

By the time June turned eighteen, for the 72nd Games, she was the unanimously suggested female volunteer and Song had few doubts that she wouldn't do it (there was an also-ran in that adoptive family, his faded photograph on the wall with every other Club member who died in the arena; she knew some of the religious people saw a higher purpose in it). The mentoring situation hadn't exactly stabilized since Mags' stroke that sent Theo and Finnick off as a strange pair for the 71st after various last minute jostlings (so much sponsor money that wound up for naught…).

Song and Tyde were confident in their candidates. June Gaudet and Sho Katsuo both volunteered as expected and in training, before the Gamemakers, and on Caesar's stage, they hit their marks.

"He's a sweet boy," Song considered Sho.

"She's a clever girl," Tyde returned the sort-of-compliment. They didn't know the others' tribute as well as their own, though Tyde knew all the front-runners enough to see that over-thinking might be the death of June. …But so might a thousand other things. In that arena would be endless ways to die.

And, in that desert full of maces, die was what they did. For all that he looked to be the more delicate one, Sho went further than June.

Back at the headquarters of the Special Athletics Club, Song and Tyde hung new photographs. Past the halfway mark in a trap set by the Sevens (they needed to not take it too personally- there was a larger goal looming, right? - but things got ugly between them and Blight and Khamphan after the Career revenge for that and neither Tyde nor Song had looked forward to explaining it to Mags) or in the final duel with a knife through the eye by One's first female Career victor, June Gaudet or an uncle with whom she shared no blood, dead was dead was dead.

It made Song think how lucky she was. She had seen all the tapes and could not confidently say any Four had ever won by being the best (…though, in retrospect, Finnick had been the best for…a unique set of variables). If you came from District Four, you won by being good enough for the particular situation that came your way.

June's adoptive father had been quietly sad at her burial, but he was old and reasonable and he hadn't blamed Song. He said some things she didn't understand and Theo, still crying, had started to smile. She supposed there might be something comforting in it if you understood.

Song's third tribute came to her first. Unlike Theo and Finnick, who were usually in the Capitol during the Games, mentoring or not mentoring (it was for the best for Song to only think about her husband's work there- thinking about the attention that Capitol continued to "lavish" on Finnick made her sick), if Song weren't on the docket, she tended to stay home.

More victors were in the Capitol than back in Four for the Games this year. Things of a certain type were supposedly coming to a head.

Annie was at home with Mrs. Surfjan. Song and Shad went to watch mandatory viewing with some of the older members of the Club, Shad crying silently through the whole bloodbath.

"Song?" a girl approached her just as she was leaving, "Are you in a hurry?"

She stopped and turned back around. It was Pesca Mirado. Seventeen. Certainly one of the top candidates for next year. "No, I can talk."

"I want you to be my mentor," Pesca announced.

"If you go…that'll only be my third time mentoring," Song said. It wasn't like it was all that long ago with June, they must have known one another at least in passing, but it seemed proper to remind Pesca anyway.

"Yeah, but I like you," Pesca shrugged, "I think you're the right one for me."

The girl was older than her marriage, but, still. For the first time, Song looked at a potential tribute and thought: "I could be her mother." "…I'll think about it," Song answered. "Good night, Pesca." She headed back home.

"C'mon!" Pesca yelled after her, "Don't be mean! …You know you want to!"

She did.

Song gave in. Not that she exactly thought Pesca was 'recommended volunteer number one' material, but if part of the deal of how far they were willing to damn themselves in Four stopped at heavily suggesting who should volunteer (Song had gotten that talk a bit early herself after the Quarter Quell took two- "It's up to you, but we believe you would be the best possible female tribute this year from District Four"), it was important to have several more good choices who might be teetering on the edge of volunteering, any of whom would be better than some reaped unknown. Pesca Mirado was one of those girls.

Spending time with Pesca, Song honestly started to hope that she wouldn't be the one. She just…well, the Capitol wanted more and more these days from tributes when it came to their looks and their quirks and all. And, aside from what she'd learned with the Club, Pesca was wonderfully more or less ordinary. A lot of more Capitol-loved tributes would have to self-destruct for Pesca Mirado to come out on top.

Then, two months before the 74th Games, the gorgeous, top-ranked Zita Cruz broke her leg.

Odysseus didn't want either Mercedes or Goldie jumping ahead with who knew what for the upcoming Quarter Quell.

Pesca Mirado volunteered.

And, while Song told her, "Keep your Games face on!" and "Third time's the charm!", privately, she despaired for the odds of this nice girl as other districts stole the show. Even Twelve. Sure, poor Haymitch deserved it, but why did it have to be now? Why, after all this time, this year?

Finnick, though he wore his usual smile for the crowds, privately struck Song as almost resigned to defeat. Well, it was going to be tough for his boy then, because he was even further from their first choice then Pesca was, and he wasn't what she'd need to win.

When she saw Lyme and Brutus there, it was something of a relief. This was her generation she'd be working with and they were sensible people and they would look at Pesca and then they'd look at the boy Finnick had ended up with and they'd know, as far as their part was concerned (there was plenty outside the mentors' grasp, Song knew that), they would lean to her tribute.

That boy hadn't picked Finnick the way Pesca had picked her. Song knew it. With the right amount of years that might've been Shad's boy, but called early it would take the big sponsor-bait to fill that gap, so here was their best effort and it had Odysseus' meddling written all over it. She was his girl. Why couldn't he just let her go with Shad and let the odds favor them between the two?

Pesca stayed upbeat. She liked the boy from Twelve. "Peeta and Pesca," she said, "See, people will remember if we make a good team! We have the same initials too."

"He has to die for you to come home," Song answered, feeling the tug of an old tightness in her chest.

"Yeah, I know," Pesca wrapped her arms around her legs and leaned her head on her knees, "But he's interesting and I always imagined that Twelves were really boring. So it's nice to be friends for now. Anyway…" she paused for a moment, "I know that I'm… I'm boring. But if I kill him- if I become part of his romantic story- it'll make me interesting, right?"

"Don't worry about interesting," Song sighed, "It's better to be boring. Just play it safe, Pesca. Try and stay alive. Whatever you do, I'll have your back as far as I can."

Pesca smiled. "I'm glad you're my mentor."

When the tracker jackers hit, Pesca did the only sensible thing she could do, throwing down her equipment to run.

She went for the water- the lake.

She ran. She stumbled. She fell. Too late, too late, too late.

Manny or June or Pesca. Dead was dead was dead.


End file.
